The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

More Articles

NEWARK, Ohio — The landfill that the Licking County health commissioner deemed a public-health
nuisance in February is about to get expensive for its owner.

On Monday, Common Pleas Judge David Branstool denied Brenda Phelps’ motion for a temporary
restraining order, which would have forced the former operators of the construction landfill on
Fallsburg Road to fix the problem.

Branstool’s decision gave the county Board of Health a green light to take action, which it did
yesterday at its April meeting.

What prompted the mess, and the outrage of Phelps’ northeastern Licking County neighbors, is
that the landfill’s retention pond has been filled to capacity for months. After a rain or a thaw,
its foul-smelling organic contents, called leachate, breach the banks and spill over onto
neighboring properties.

At last month’s Board of Health meeting, Phelps made it clear she doesn’t have the means or the
expertise to fix the problem. Her attorney, Jack Van Kley, referred to the landfill as an “
unwelcomed asset” that Phelps inherited from her husband, who died in 2002.

In 2008, she leased the landfill to her late husband’s nephew, Chuck Roberts, and his wife,
Susan. They operated it until this past December.Phelps, in her motion with the court, said the
Robertses were still under contract to operate the landfill and remediate the problems. Branstool
disagreed.

Now, the county will hire someone to draw down the pond — at Phelps’ expense.

“We hope to start getting estimates this week,” said Health Commissioner Joe Ebel. He estimated
it could cost more than $30,000 to draw the leachate pond down to a safe level. “It’s a big pond,”
he said. “They took two 6,000-gallon tanks off of it late last year, and it hardly made a dent.”&
amp; amp; lt; /p>

The county also proposed denying another operator’s license for the landfill. Phelps has until
Friday to appeal that plan; otherwise the long process of closing and capping the landfill will
begin.